Another short road trip from Calgary brought us out to Innisfail – not too far from my house in the north part of the city. We went old-school and drove through the tiny little burger and shake shack called D&R Drive-In. There was quite a long line of cars, so it did take a while… Pre-COVID you could eat your food on a picnic table out front, but alas, that is no more.
We went for burgers, fries and onion rings because, it’s a drive-in! We also went back after our supper and got milkshakes from the walk-up window for the ride home 🙂
Once we got our food we drove down the street to a grassy field in front of a school. We pulled out our folding lawn chairs with attached side tables and sat on the side of the road to eat our supper. We got some funny looks, but whatever LOL. You gotta do what you gotta do!
I had read a review that the mushroom fries were delicious so knew I had to try those. I got the special of the day – the Mac & Cheese Burger with fries and a drink for $11.99. Since I upgraded my fries to the mushroom fries, it worked out to be something more than that.
The mushroom fries were okay… the crinkle cut fries kind of downgraded the potential. If they were handcut fries they would have been so much better! The mushroom gravy is really just a white gravy with some mushrooms in it. The photo doesn’t look that great, but the fries were good, especially with some ketchup… they reminded me of my youth for some reason. Perhaps it was the copious amount of fries and gravy that I ate at the curling rink and arena when I was a kid!
My mac & cheese burger was good. I like that they put all the fixings on it – I wouldn’t have chose to put green relish on it myself, but it tasted fine. I’m pretty sure that the mac & cheese part was simply the addition of their mac & cheese bites that sell for $6 as an appetizer on the menu. The crispy, breaded bite added texture and crunch, but not a whole lot of flavour.
Max got the jumbo mushroom burger for $6.50. It was similar to the mushroom fries – a white gravy with mushrooms in it was piled on the burger. Max wasn’t really impressed, and as you can tell it was quite messy. I took a bite and it was okay. Personally, I’d rather have a pile of pan fried mushrooms on a mushroom burger.
The star of the meal was the onion rings – yes, I saved the best for last! I’ve never really liked onion rings because most often you take a bite and the whole onion ring comes out of the batter and they’ve always seemed so greasy to me. Since COVID began, I’ve now found 2 onion rings that I love – one from Modern Burger in downtown Calgary (panko crusted and delicious) and these ones from D&R Drive-In in Innisfail… these onion rings are worth the trip on their own. The batter is thick – kind of like donut batter, but not sweet. You take a bit and the onion stays put, and they’re surprisingly not greasy! These are wicked onion rings! (note, we ate one before I took the pic LOL)
After we finished supper we stopped back in for milkshakes for the drive home. I had a medium strawberry with real berries and Max had a large butterscotch. They had to make the mix for the butterscotch, so we had to wait for a while, but it was a nice evening so we enjoyed the sun. Since we’re both lactose intolerant we took our pills and listened to our bellies gurgle the whole way home! The milkshakes were good – nice and thick.
Overall, it was a fun experience to head to a classic drive-in and it’s always nice to support a family business that employs local youth.
Comments